


Intestate

by Jayne L (JayneL)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 05:22:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/658440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayneL/pseuds/Jayne%20L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompts: replace, wrong, loss</p>
            </blockquote>





	Intestate

The car's parked at the diner she passes--eats at, every once in a while, because their roast beef's cheap and filling and justifiable despite her student debt--on her way home from her Wednesday night class. The light of a streetlamp glinting off chrome catches her eye, and she swerves her own piece of crap hatchback into the lot before she even really realizes what she noticed or why.

Staring at the big black boat of a classic car as she waits for its owners to emerge from the diner, she remembers how it smelled inside, of cold vinyl and something metallic; the soft, heavy sway of it in motion; the upset in the air and worried tremble in her stomach as she curled up between her parents in the back seat. She remembers the car that carried her away from her childhood better than she remembers the people who drove it.

But when Dean Winchester finally does leave the diner--and he's alone, apparently, doesn't wait for anyone else to follow him out--she knows him immediately. Even though he's older; even though the decade since she saw him last shows on him in ways he hasn't let it show on his car.

She follows him back to his motel, a single-level U-shaped place that looks barely more livable than a storage facility. Serves the same function, she supposes, more or less; only for people, rather than for boxes of things that have outlived their usefulness, things nobody wants around anymore. Things people want to forget.

She hears him grumble something in the minute between her knock and his answer, and she thinks maybe he's not alone, after all. When he opens the door, she tries to look past him, but he's tall and broad and he only opens the door half-way, so she tells herself to be patient and focuses on him. "You remember me?"

Not too patient, though.

He leans against the doorframe, his right shoulder and arm out of sight. She assumes he has a gun in his hand. She would, and she's not even in the business. After a cursory glance at her and the parking lot behind her, he shakes his head easily, pleasantly. "Sorry, sweetheart, I think you've got the wrong--"

"No." She repeats herself, this time without the deniability of a question. "You remember me."

He looks her over again. At first, it's with faint, finite amusement, like he's sure he doesn't remember her at all, like he's only taking a moment to indulge her--maybe even to enjoy the view--before he brushes her off for good. But when his gaze reaches her cheekbones--her eyes--he falters; stops the dismissive sweep of his glance, and _looks_. His own eyes widen in shock. "Holy--"

"No."

* * *

She was right the first time. He's alone.

Castiel is dead, he tells her. Long dead, years dead. "I kept waiting for him to come back," he muses, looking wistfully at his beer bottle instead of uneasily at her. "He always had before, but I guess--that time, I guess he'd finally done something right." He doesn't explain how dying and staying dead could be the consequence of something done _right_.

Castiel is dead, he tells her, and any slight trace of her father that might've remained died with him.

"You didn't think I--" Her voice fractures, too high, too reedy. And she said it wrong, spoke too honestly. She swallows, hoping he didn't notice. In her lap, her fingers twist together until she thinks they'll snap. "You didn't think we needed to know? Me and my mom? You didn't think you should maybe track us down and tell us?"

Dean pauses with his beer halfway to the wry crook of his mouth, his gaze turned inward, like he's only just now realising why not doing so at the time might have been a failure. "Can't say that I did," he answers finally, and his voice is rough, but his tone is mild.

It's not like Claire doesn't understand his reasoning.

* * *

She goes back the next day, knowing it's a bad idea but needing too much, and too incoherently, to care.

She half-expects him to be gone. She half-wants him to be gone; that would mean she'd frightened him off, wouldn't it? She was more than he wanted to deal with? She reminded him of more than he could bear?

He gives her a long look when he finds her at his door again. He looks tired. He looks unhappy. He looks alone.

He steps aside to let her in without saying a word.

* * *

"You look like him," Dean says. Mutters, after a few hours of elliptical small talk and bottomless silences, when he's hip-deep into a fifth of bourbon and looking like he's maybe two more swallows away from cracking into jagged pieces all over the floor.

Claire's spent the last few hours feeling the weight of his gaze follow her around the room. She doesn't think he meant for her to hear, which is why she looks right at him when she corrects, "No, I look like my dad." She knows the resemblance is there. She's seen old pictures, some from when he was barely older than she is now. And sometimes, her mom and her grandparents look at her like they're seeing a ghost.

Like Dean's looking at her right now. He stares, ashen and speechless, like she's just given him a sip shy of those two more swallows of bourbon.

Claire crosses the room, takes the bottle from his hand, and watches him watch her drink.

* * *

Dean passes out on the sofa.

Claire goes to the bed, which hasn't been made up for at least the past couple of days. She stands beside it for a while, a little uneven on her feet, thinking about taking off her clothes before sliding under the rumpled blankets. Thinking about stripping down to her underwear and feeling Dean's sheets on her naked skin. The way Dean acts around her, she's almost certain they wouldn't be the first bedsheets Novak and Winchester bodies have shared.

She stands there a while longer, thinking about the absurdity of considering them "Novak bodies".

When she finally climbs into bed, she's still dressed.

* * *

Someone is standing over her in the dark.

Claire's disoriented, her thoughts thick with the remnants of bourbon and sleep. She thinks she's dreaming, that it's only the same silent, separate, watchful presence she's dreamt of since she was a child. As always in her dreams, she shifts her body towards it, awareness slow and prickling.

"Cas?" It's barely a whisper above her, hesitant, broken consonants on the ends of a dragged-out breath. Claire stills, waking fully all at once. Dean doesn't seem to notice. "Cas, are you--?"

She wants to answer. She wants to open her eyes, reach for him and _pretend_ , just as he's pretending. She wants it to be true.

After a time, Dean sighs, quiet and shaky, and shuffles unsteadily away.

Claire's body is hollow and aching with want.

* * *

Dean is thinking of her father, Claire knows, as she fits the head of his cock to the slick heat of her cunt and sinks down. But that's all right, because she's thinking of Castiel.

What she remembers of him--not her father, _him_ \--is all impression, internal and sightless: chaotic force and absolute will, scalding purpose, overwhelming fullness and need. A kind of _too much_ that could never be _enough_. She thinks of Castiel and fucks herself on Dean and discovers that, actually, it's easier not to pretend at all.

"Inside me," she gasps as she's getting close, and Dean makes a low, desperate sound. His broad hands clutch their way up her thighs, slipping in sweat, holding her to the frantic upward rock of his hips. "Inside me, inside me--"

He comes with a coarse moan, with a bruising grip on her body, with his eyes fixed on hers. Looking at her and remembering her father, thinking of Castiel and spilling inside _her_.

Claire's back arches, and she grinds herself down, and she thinks of Castiel, and it will never be enough.


End file.
